By SEAN AXMAKER, SPECIAL TO THE P-I

Published 10:00 pm, Thursday, June 1, 2006

They are scribbly little tangles, these Frank Gehry sketches. They look more like motion studies or the quick and dirty impressions of natural phenomenon in transition than building concepts. The magic of Sydney Pollack's portrait of his friend, architect Gehry, is how he helps us see these squiggles become the shapes, waves and bodies of the massive buildings that sprout from these seedling ideas.

Pollack frames it as a conversation between artists, which I assume is his excuse for the distracting tendency to keep appearing in the shots, usually with his camera in hand.

He confesses that he knows nothing about architecture, but he does know what it's like being an artist working in a commercial medium. That approach informs his profile of the world-renowned "architect that is also an artist" with a curiosity of the creative process and an awareness of the practical side.

It makes for a brief but marvelous digest introduction to the sculptural art and artist. Pollack puts his perspective on Gehry's buildings, in both extended studies (the section on the Bilbao Guggenheim Museum) and quick samples of his range of buildings (Seattle's EMP is glimpsed in a few montages).

The camera drinks in the angles, curves and textures, and the way it all shapes the light as if it's yet another of Gehry's non-traditional materials, and Pollack creates his own video sketchbook of Gehry impressions.